y named Mount Hope was a
graceful mound about two hundred feet high, commanding an extensive
and remarkably beautiful view of wide, sweeping forests and indented
bays.

This celebrated mound is about four miles from the city of Fall River.
From its summit the eye now ranges over Providence, Bristol, Warren,
Fall River, and many other minor towns. The whole wide-spread
landscape is embellished with gardens, orchards, cultivated fields,
and thriving villages. Gigantic steamers plow the waves, and the sails
of a commerce which girdles the globe whitens the beautiful bay.

But, as the tourist sits upon the solitary summit, he forgets the
present in memory of the past. Neither the pyramids of Egypt nor the
Coliseum of the Eternal City are draped with a more sublime antiquity.
Here, during generations which no man can number, the sons of the
forest gathered around their council-fires, and struggled, as human
hearts, whether savage or civilized, must ever struggle, against
"life's stormy doom."

Here, long centuries ago, were the joys of the bridal, and the anguish
which gathers around the freshly-opened grave. Beneath the moon, which
then, as now, silvered this mound, "the Indian lover wooed his dusky
maid." Upon the beach, barbaric childhood reveled, and their red limbs
were bathed in the crystal waves.

Here, in ages long since passed away, the war-whoop resounded through
the forest. The shriek of mothers and maidens pierced the skies as
they fell cleft by the tomahawk; and all the horrid clangor of war,
with "its terror, conflagration, tears, and blood," imbittered ten
thousand fold the ever bitter lot of humanity.

"'Tis dangerous to rouse the lion;
Deadly to cross the tiger's path;
But the most terrible of terrors
Is man himself in his wild wrath."

In the midst of this attractive scene, perhaps nothing is more
conspicuous than the spires of the churches--those churches of a pure
Christianity to which New England is indebted for all her intelligence
and prosperity. It was upon the Bible that our forefathers laid the
foundations of the institutions of this New World; and, though they
made some mistakes, for they were but mortal, still they were sincere,
conscientious Christian men, and their Christianity has been the
legacy from which their children have derived the greatest benefits.
Two hundred years ago, our fathers, from the summit of Mount Hope,
looked upon a dreary wilderness through